


where angels tread

by A_Starry_Night



Category: Broadchurch, Highway to Heaven
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-11
Updated: 2016-10-21
Packaged: 2018-07-22 20:32:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7453015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Starry_Night/pseuds/A_Starry_Night
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joe Miller's plea is only a couple of days away and all of Broadchurch is waiting for the verdict, but none so much as Beth Latimer as she nurses her hatred towards the man who killed her son. And then she meets a mysterious stranger on the cliffs above the town, and she finds there's a way to lay the past to rest. BC S2 compliant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Alright, alright, what is the set up here? I mean, who’s your boss?_

_God._

_What?_

_My boss. It’s God._

00000000

It was a grey and overcast (but surprisingly dry) windy autumn evening when Beth Latimer left the stifling atmosphere of her home and walked along the cliffs of Broadchurch. She had been steadily growing more and more stifled in the four walls of her household as the weather grew chill and the nights longer until finally she bade Mark and Chloe goodbye for the evening and left for her favorite walking trail.

Her swollen belly hampered both her speed and her endurance and she had to stop for a moment halfway up the cliff. Her hands automatically came up to rest atop her stomach that was so steadily growing this other life inside of her and she felt the familiar surge of love and resentment stir within her much as she tried to suppress it.

It had been now been months since her Danny, her little boy, had been murdered by Joe Miller but the pain was as strong as it had been since first finding his body on the beach. It was as she had told Paul—although her heart had melted seeing her unborn baby growing in her womb, there still wasn’t enough room in her soul for another child when she still couldn’t let go of Danny. In some moments she would feel her baby move and she would smile with the unconditional love of a mother; then in others a loathing would choke her for this growing parasite and fleetingly (shamefully) she’d wonder why she didn’t already go and abort the pregnancy.

Well. It was far too late for abortion. The only thing left to do now was to carry to full term.

With a sigh Beth sat down on a boulder and looked out over the ocean crashing along the shore below her. It was peaceful here. It allowed her to think.

“Penny for your thoughts,” came a sudden voice from behind her. Startled, Beth jerked fully upright from her tired slouch and twisted on her seat to find she’d been followed. Surprise made her speak without speaking. 

“Who the hell are you?”

She immediately winced at the unbelievably rude words of her greeting fell in the air, waiting for her newfound company to become insulted, but the man merely grinned in easy reply. “A stranger,” he said simply, as if that explained everything.

Maybe it did. Beth cleared her throat nervously and shifted again on her spot. “I-… ah, I didn’t realize you were up here too.” At this specific spot she was sure she would have either seen him or heard his approach.

His grin gentled in a way that told her he guessed the drift of her thoughts. “I didn’t think you would,” he assured her quietly. “You were miles away.”

She glanced back at him sharply. Something about him reminded her about Steve Connelly and it made her uneasy. “Not the most polite thing to do, sneaking up on me like that.”

“Your greeting wasn’t so polite, either, so let’s just call it even.” He seemed genuinely amused by her sharp tongue, not put off in the slightest. “You looked like you could use some company.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to let him know in no uncertain terms that she was perfectly happy to spend this time by herself, thank you, but she paused before the words left her mouth. “If you want to,” she found herself saying instead.

“Thanks.”

Her heart finally evening out again, Beth let her hands drop away from her stomach and took a moment to look over the stranger. It was hard to determine his age but she supposed he was in his late 40s, small and stocky with curling hair grown to his shoulders. Plain worn blue jeans, faded white sneakers, a weathered brown leather jacket—he seemed entirely out of place and the stranger he professed to be. “I’m sorry, I didn’t as you your name.”

He seated himself on the opposite edge of the boulder facing her. He had an easy smile, open and warm. “Jonathan Smith.”

She snorted. “’John Doe’ would’ve been a bit too obvious, wouldn’t it?”

“Maybe. I didn’t choose it.”

His dry remark made her lip twitch with real amusement. “Parents always think they’re clever.”

“My father certainly has a sense of humor.”

She smiled politely, not wishing to discuss families long dead. “I’m Beth.”

“I know.”

On guard, Beth stiffened again. “I’m sure you do,” she said bitterly. There she went again with the rude remarks before she could stop them from slipping out, but she was tired. Reporters had run around Broadchurch following Joe Miller’s arrest and Beth just wanted some normalcy back in her life and not be recognized by everyone on the street.

Jonathan simply looked at her for a quiet moment before he answered. “A friend told me,” he admitted. “I’m not a reporter, Beth. I’m not here to get the latest news on how the estranged family is doing.”

“Then what are you here for?”

There it was, that gentle grin that somehow put her at ease rather than increasing her mistrust. “Like I said: you looked like you could use some company.”

“I’m married,” she told him shortly, just in case he really was some sick bastard wanting to hit on her.

He nodded. “I know.”

Of course he would know that, following the story of Danny’s murder. He didn’t say anything else after that declaration but he also didn’t move closer to her, or move at all, actually. It seemed he was waiting for her to speak.

She floundered, put off by the quiet. “What are you doing so far from America, then?” His accent was clearly born and bred across the pond.

He shrugged. “I travel a lot. Never stay in one place for very long. I was just passing through when my boss told me to take a few days here.”

“Just like that? Wish I had a boss like that, giving me a vacation on a whim.” Her grin died quickly, however, weighted down by the past few months. Danny would never go on vacation with his family again. “I got too crowded in my house,” she confessed suddenly. “I needed some air.”

“Crowded and irritating,” he agreed about the house. “The view here certainly is worth the climb. I thought the Pacific was beautiful.”

“You lived by the ocean, too, then?”

“All along the California coast for- oh, about twenty years.” He looked out upon the waters again, that same slight smile on his face. “Nothing more beautiful in the world than the sea.” For a moment he was quiet, contemplating the view, then he looked over at her again. “So what’s the matter then?”

Beth barked a bitter laugh, burrowing into her light jacket. “What’s not the matter anymore? You’ve watched the news, read the papers—my best friend’s husband murdered my son.” She couldn’t contain the hatred in her voice.

Jonathan surely noticed the tone but he didn’t point it out. He didn’t speak at all, actually; he waited. 

She shook her head despairingly. “Joe Miller’s plea hearing is only a few days away. It’s the moment that I’ve been waiting for since Danny died—to hear his killer admit he’s guilty.”

“He might say he’s guilty. He might not.” The way he said it sounded like a caution. “Guilt plays a funny game. It makes you say and do things you might not otherwise do.”

She glared at him, tempted to stand up and walk away. She couldn’t run from him as she had Connelly but her fury with this man was swiftly reaching the same levels she’d had with the con man. “You sound like you’re taking his side.”

“I’m not. What Joe Miller did to Danny was his own doing.” It was spoken matter-of-factly, so much so that Beth couldn’t help but be slightly mollified with the response. She unclenched her hands and forced herself to inhale deeply. “You’re angry.”

The simple remark made her nod. “All the time,” she admitted quietly. “I hate Joe Miller for what he did. I’m furious with myself, with Mark… even Danny, for not telling us what was going on. And Ellie…” She trailed off, finding it difficult to speak aloud about her former best friend.

Her fury directed towards Ellie Miller was still burning strong.

“You get tired after awhile.”

For a split second Beth was scared she spoken of her exhaustion aloud, but after a moment she realized that it had been Jonathan who had last spoken. She caught his gaze, realizing belatedly that his eyes were a shade of tepid green similar to her own. “You sound like you’ve been tired before, too.”

Jonathan stood, breaking the moment apart as he slid his hands into the pockets of his beaten jacket. “Everyone has been or will be, Beth. What matters is what we do after we’ve dropped from the exhaustion.” And as abruptly as he had started a conversation with her, he nodded a farewell. “I’m sure I’ll see you around. Enjoy your view.”

Startled and a bit put off by such a short dismissal, Beth looked over at the same view Jonathan had just mentioned, her hair tousled by the sea breeze. When she turned back to the trail leading back down to the beach she found Jonathan gone and the walking path empty.


	2. Chapter II

“Chapter 2”

She saw Jonathan again only a week later. Broadchurch was in an uproar following Joe Miller’s plea of ‘not guilty’, but Beth had been steadily drifting in a cloud of haze and shock knowing that her little boy was still not receiving the justice he so sorely deserved. Mark had tried to talk to her about it but she had quickly shut him down and focused on her swiftly-burning rage against the ones who had so definitively destroyed her family.

He was down at the beach near enough to the water’s edge that she wondered if she’d find his feet wet from wading. He was still wearing those old worn clothes except for the leather jacket; today he’d opted to have only a light blue long-sleeved shirt, and idly Beth wondered why he still bothered to wear such out-of-style clothes.

“You knew, didn’t you?” she demanded as soon as she was within earshot. Not much of a stellar greeting, she knew, but her hackles had been raised for days now. “You knew that Joe was going to plead not guilty!”

“I suspected,” he countered her in his quiet way. He didn’t seem particularly put off by her approach or her accusation. Today, his apparent inherent passiveness made her want to lash out.

So she did. “What the hell are you playing at? No one could guess he was going to plead that way! You told me that guilt could make someone do things they wouldn’t otherwise do, like you know what he was thinking! Have you been visiting him at his jail cell and talking to him?”

Jonathan shook his head. “I’d have no reason to do that, Beth.”

“Then how were you so sure?”

The furious shout stalled his answer for a moment. When his reply came it was without a change in stance or expression. “Because I’ve known better men than Joe Miller become ensnared in their guilt the way he has.”

The simple, honest statement stole the wind from Beth’s sails. Honesty. It had been such a long time since she’d had such a transparent conversation. The baby kicked her. “I saw Ellie there, at the hearing,” she said, startling herself. “Sitting with Hardy, having the gall to cry for her precious husband.” She spat the last word. “She probably thinks that she can save face by appearing innocent in all of this.”

His expression had shifted now, so minutely she hadn’t immediately noticed it. His eyes were frosty with disagreement. “Have you considered, Beth,” he volunteered quietly, “that Ellie Miller truly didn’t know anything about what Joe was doing?”

His words were like a slap to her face; she wondered why it felt like betrayal. “How would you know?” she countered sharply. “You’re just a stranger passing through. You weren’t here during the- the investigation.” Beth was pleased she only stumbled a little on mentioning Danny’s murder aloud.

Jonathan’s gaze was steady. Did nothing faze him? “Some could say you haven’t been here yourself, Beth.”

Her throat tightened. “How did this get turned back on me? I’ve lost my boy, my little boy— it’s Joe, and Ellie. They’re the guilty ones!” 

“Yeah, you’re right: you’ve lost Danny. No one can fault you for how you feel— no one should be trying to tell you how to feel. But it’s about time you stopped thinking just of yourself.”

“How dare you!” 

Beth found herself shaking with fury, her hands balled into fists painfully at her sides. Her shout echoed along the beach and hit her in the face as it bounced off of the cliff behind them. She was tempted to slap him, stranger or not, and see the disapproval in his eyes disappear. 

“How can you—? You can’t think that I- I think of my family every day. Mark, Chloe— I think of them all the time—”

“In correlation with Danny.” His tone had sharpened. “And you’re punishing your family by doing so. Your husband, your daughter— you’ve neglected them in your grief. And that small, unborn life still growing; you’ve already decided that it won’t ever come close to what Danny was. Tell me, Beth, how is that fair?”

She had no answer. Her anger had burnt itself out for the moment, leaving her shaken and numb. “I… I’ve got to go,” she heard herself say, and then she was turning and practically fleeing from the water’s edge, desperate to calm her roiling stomach. 

Damn him! Who did he think he was, demanding her to answer such questions? Of course she was attentive to Mark and Chloe. She loved them, didn’t she? They were her family, the same as Danny was… and that was when she realized the point Jonathan had made. Every thought she’d had of Mark or Chloe, and especially her unborn child, was always followed by the memory of Danny. Like she was comparing. Like she was judging.

She reached the pier overlooking the ocean and sitting down on one of the benches she buried her face in her hands. Tears pricked at her eyes but she forced them back, unwilling to break down now. She was stronger than that.

So why, then, did she feel so close to shattering?

~/~/~/~/~

Mark was never answering her calls. Nige didn’t know where he was. Concern was turning into irritation the more her husband continued to skirt around the issues that were still between them. She focused on Joe Miller’s trial, determined to see her child’s killer put behind bars for what he had done. She and Mark joined forces to try and convince Jocelyn Knight she needed to help the Latimer family but it was only barely that the older woman caved at all and decided to do as they asked. 

Sharon Bishop showed up and as soon as she stepped foot on Broadchurch’s sand she was displaying her true dirty colors. 

Danny was exhumed to be examined like a discarded piece of evidence rather than left alone as a victim of a demented madman. Why did they have to dig up Beth’s agony while they were at it? Her fury exploded at her son’s gravesite again, fully forgetting Jonathan’s question in Ellie’s defense, and she ignored the tears in her old friend’s eyes.

If she had only been able to look past her own anger, she would have seen a face as devastated and agonized as her own.

Jonathan found her later that same day as she sat staring at the ocean from the same spot they’d first spoken at. He hadn’t yet approached her while in town (she’d never seen him there, anyway, except for when he was leaving The Traders) but out here he seemed comfortable enough to speak with her. Beth didn’t really mind when she thought about it; she supposed she wouldn’t want their talks to take place while in town anyway.

He knew already of Danny’s exhumation; the sadness in his expression was obvious. He sat beside her with his hands buried deeply in his pockets, following her gaze out to the horizon. Gulls cried in the distance.

“I told her I hated her today,” she confessed suddenly in the silence. 

She turned to glance at him in time to see him nod. His wearied disappointment was worse to see than his irritation. “I know.”

~/~/~/~/~

She didn’t see him again until after Elizabeth was born. At that point she had thought he had left Broadchurch altogether, that his boss had finally called him back to wherever he was needed. It did amuse her at one point to recall the obvious wry fondness in his tone every time he mentioned his boss. Maybe Beth would grow curious enough one day to ask him his boss’s name.

It was following yet another exhausting and draining day at court that she sought refuge by herself out on the causeway above the dam, one of her running trails that was rarely frequented by tourists even in the height of summer. The sun was hot on the back of her neck; she shouldn’t have decided to keep her jacket on. She was just sliding it off when she heard him call her name.

“Haven’t seen you in awhile. I thought you’d left.” She allowed the obvious to start the conversation.

He smiled. “The boss gave me a few more days. Said I could work from home.”

Beth looked at him curiously. “Where’s ‘home’?”

Jonathan shrugged. “Anywhere I want it to be.”

“Touche.” Beth managed a grin, surprised that she still retained a sense of humor. Down the walkway she saw a old man seated there in an old plaid shirt and dirty ball cap, his thick white beard visible even from several yards away. He was definitely watching her and Jonathan. “You have company today,” she remarked. “Your dad?”

Finally he looked surprised. He barked a laugh. “Mark? No. No, we’re not related. He’s just a very good friend of mine.” Turning he called out, “She thinks we’re related, buddy.”

The old man may have been bent over from age but his voice was still loud and full of spirit. “That’s it! I’m not travelin’ with you anymore, Jonathan, I’m not gonna stand to be called your dad. You ain’t my kid.”

“If there’s any kid here, Mark, it’s you.”

Ouch. Beth’s smile widened. The old man straightened where he sat. “And I ain’t dead yet, either, so you gotta respect your elders.”

Beth laughed outright, unable to help it. Jonathan sent him a look she didn’t quite understand, something that promised a remark later when she was no longer in their company. When he turned back to her, the smile on his face softened. “Congratulations, by the way. Did everything go alright?”

Of course he would have heard of the baby’s birth. Beth nodded. “Ellie insisted on being there for the whole time but other than that it was fine. She had the audacity to congratulate me about Lizzy’s birth. I told her to leave.”

He sighed. “She was showing she cared, Beth. What’s wrong with that?”

The anger from a few days ago had faded again. Unbidden she told him about the past few days at court, of Sharon Bishop’s accusing Ellie and Hardy of an affair, and of the dismissal of Joe’s confession due to Ellie’s beating him while in the interrogation room. When finally it was all out in the open she shook her head in dismay.

“I accused her of deliberately hurting Joe so that he would get off. And now, I- I’m not sure what I feel. We go back to court in a few days again and I dread it, wondering what else could go wrong.”

“You can’t help other peoples’ actions. You can only decide yours, you know that.”

Beth laughed bitterly. “You know that Paul tried to baptize Lizzy the other day? Mark stopped him. Said that God wasn’t part of our household.”

Jonathan raised his eyebrows. “Did you try to stop Paul?”

“No.”

The man grinned in real amusement. “It seems to me that God’s already knocking on your household door, then.”

“That’s what Paul said. He said he thought that God was a part of our family.”

“Smart man. I should go talk to him sometime.”

“You believe in God and you still haven’t talked to the local vicar, yet?” The joke slipped out before she could stop it. “What sort of Christian are you?”

“A bad one,” he admitted with a soft smile. “You can raise Lizzy anyway you want to, Beth, but it doesn’t hurt to tell her that God loves her. Sometimes that’s all someone needs to hear.”

“I don’t know if I can say that to her yet,” she confessed. “Not so soon after Danny… Paul told me that he wasn’t sure why God would create my son and then just as quickly take him away. He said that some believe it’s because God takes those he loves most first.”

There it was again, that flicker in his eyes that seemed to harden his expression somehow. “You know, Mark down there,” he nodded back to his friend, “once blamed himself for the death of a five-year-old girl; we’d found her at an amusement park lost and he thought if we hadn’t reunited her with her mother when we did then they wouldn’t have been in a wreck caused by a drunk driver on the way home.”

Beth’s heart softened with pity. She didn’t need the details of the wreck to imagine the devastation caused by the wreck. She could guess the point Jonathan was trying to make. “And your friend asked why the little girl was killed so horribly.”

“Why God allowed it to happen is more like it.”

“Why did He?”

Jonathan glanced back at the waiting old man. There was something there in his expression that she had never seen before and it scared her. “He didn’t,” he answered shortly, “anymore than He allowed Joe Miller to kill your son.”

“He could’ve stopped it!”

“We all make choices, Beth. Every day, every minute of our lives is made up of choices, what we will or won’t do. God doesn’t dictate or control our every action while here on this Earth; we have the free will to decide for ourselves. Both the good and the bad. What’s the point of blaming God for our own choices?”

“You really believe that.” The words slipped out quietly; she felt like he had swept the rug out from under her. Paul’s words from so many months ago had allowed her some measure of anger, even hatred, to this God who had stolen her son from her because He had wanted danny for Himself. Now here was Jonathan, swiftly tearing down the unsure, regretful words of Broadchurch’s local vicar and shifting the blame of Danny’s murder squarely on the shoulders of man.

Jonathan reached out and grasped her shoulder; weathered hands, hardened by honest work but surprisingly gentle. “You can’t call a child dying God’s will.”

How could he speak of such things so surely? Her walls of steadfast hatred and anger were starting to crumble.

‘Please, Beth, don’t give up. Not now. Not after all you’ve been through. Fight. Fight for Danny, for yourself. For your family. And fight for your friends.”

Beth took a steadying breath and looked up wearily, knowing already who it was he was alluding to with the mention of ‘friends’. “Ellie means nothing to me, Jonathan. She’s not my friend.” The venom in her voice was weak even as she said it.

“She’s not now. But she can be again, if only you’d let her.”

She was so deep in thought then she didn’t immediately notice that he was walking away from her. A moment of panic choked her at his sudden absence. “Jonathan!” As he turned to look at her inquisitively she struggled with a mouthful of words, feeling like she was suffocating on them. She nodded in the direction of the waiting Mark. “He’s your friend, yeah? Has he ever turned his back on you? Betrayed you?”

There was something sad in his grin as he nodded. “Turned his back? Yeah. But you want to know something, Beth? I forgave him. He’s not long for this world.” And without waiting for a reply (which she didn’t have) he turned around again and walked away. Beth watched him help Mark to stand, his hand trailing across the old man’s wide shoulders as he helped his friend down the causeway. Something he said made the old man laugh aloud.

Friends. Just the thought of friendship made her feel lonely. Ellie had been that friend once; the one she could call at any time on any day and know that she wouldn’t be brushed off. Ellie had never hesitated to hug her or lay her hand on Beth’s arm to calm or comfort her. 

Sitting down on the nearest bench, she thought about the day in court when Joe’s confession was dismissed. Hardy had been the one to try and save it; but throughout it all he had tried to place the blame squarely on his own shoulders. He had wanted to save Ellie from further blame, she realized. A mark of friendship, perhaps? But they had hated each other during the case, Ellie and Hardy— or so Beth recalled from late-night conversations during the case. And he had been rather cold and aloof in a way even throughout the beginning. So why the sudden change of heart towards Ellie now? Unless, she thought to herself treacherously, Jonathan was right and Ellie really hadn’t known what Joe had done…

The walls crumbled completely. Once the thought was there she couldn’t put it back.

And tried to put it back. Oh, how she tried.


End file.
